Scientists have dredged up the oldest known living creature and have called it Ming.
According to reports, the 405-year-old clam (for it is that kind of mollusc) has not been named for the ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats, but for the Ming Dynasty which ruled China when it was young. The clam is so old that during its youth …

Link, Luce

It was already dead....

Given that I live in Iceland and see this type of shells on the coastline. I am sure that it was already dead when they found it on the coastline. But this type of animals live in the deep ocean, not on the coastline.

But I don't think they know for how long the animal had been dead when they found the shell.

April 1st?

"Help the Aged has funded the team investigating the clam to the tune of £40,000."?

If this is indeed all true, does this not prove the fact that science is THAT fantastic!? We find a creature older than anything else living and we manage to kill the poor bloody thing? Way to go Mankind!

Surely it didn't NEED to die? Could it not have been kept in an environment akin to that from which it came? And I'm hoping it didn't HAVE to be killed to get it's age? Not like cutting a tree down to see how old it is by counting the rings?

"Oooo.... this tree was 735 years old before we mercilessly cut it down to see how old it is!"

But...

Ex-clam

> Could it not have been kept in an environment akin to that from which it came?

Cold, dark and under massive pressure? No, I don't think so. I'm guessing that the clam was alive when it was dredged up but couldn't/didn't survive the trip to the surface. The Bangor report doesn't give a Cause of Death, or mention what 400-year old clam tastes like.

cold+dark

"The Bangor scientists...believe that the clams may have evolved exceptionally effective defences which hold back the destructive ageing processes that normally occur."

Or it could just be that living in a cold dark environment while doing very little helps you live longer. Can't be very stressful being a clam, waiting for food to drift into your mouth.

If you want to see the ageing process at work call your IT bods with an unexplained, critical, company-wide problem that hits first thing Monday morning. I might make a suggestion that our DBAs should be stored in the fridge to improve their longevity.

And I thought...

... the story was going to be about Joan Rivers. But then I remembered she had been molested by science (if you can call Plastic surgery a science). I wonder if they'll be saying similar things about Paris when they defrost her in a couple of hundred years.

Quote: priceless!

conclusion :

if you want to live till 405 hide then simply stay away from scientists. simple as that. if a scientist sees you you will die ... we should outlaw all scientists as they are the leading cause of deaths... after all they also invented cars and cancer right ?

Beardless clam is illegal.

Hey! Boffins, leaves those clams alone

What is it with scientists? They just can't leave things alone. This poor mollusc is just the latest victim. For decades they have been raving about the pico-seconds after the Big Bang. I'd be more interested in the 30 seconds before it, and I'll bet there was a scientist there saying “They said I'd blow up the world with my black hole generator, but I'll prove them all wrong. WRONG I TELL YOU. Now hit that butto.........”